"Ooh!" Ana broke out into her best approximation of a harem girl dance. She didn't stand up to do it, but wiggled in place, waving her arms and batting her eyes until they both dissolved into laughter.
Which was right about the time a tinny strain of 'What a Wonderful World' sang out from Miranda's back pocket. Ana gaped at the phone while Miranda whipped it out and looked at the screen. Her mouth tightened.
"Finish your paperwork," she said, abruptly leaving the table and retreating with her phone back down the hall to her bedroom. She closed the door, leaving Ana with nothing but the sound of muffled conversation and her own hurt feelings to listen to. Was this the way their entire week would go? What did Miranda do here that she couldn't take a break from the 'emergencies' long enough for them to do anything together?
No longer interested in the application, Ana checked random boxes, scribbled a few half-hearted answers on each open line and then signed her name at the bottom, just so she could say it was done. She stuffed the papers back into the manila envelope.
By the time Miranda returned, Ana had the breakfast dishes cleaned up, the table clean and kitchen straightened, and herself braced for bad news. It was going to be another day of 'bye-bye Miranda,' while Ana rattled around in this apartment by herself.
"I have to go," Miranda said, once more in civilian clothing—tan slacks with a white button-down shirt, and her coat thrown over her arm. "Just for a little while, though. I'll be back—"
"As soon as you can," Ana said with her. She tried to keep an understanding tone, but she wasn't sure how successfully she was managing to hide her bitterness. Particularly when Miranda stopped rootling through her desk in search of her keys and wallet, and looked at her. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Shoulders drooping, Miranda crossed the room to wrap her in a hug. "Not all your visit is going to be like this, I promise. Let me see if Selena's free to show you around."
"That's okay." Swallowing her disappointment, Ana managed a smile for Miranda's sake. She wasn't trying to be selfish, although she wouldn't have minded hoarding a little more of Miranda's time for herself. She definitely didn't want a babysitter, either. "Go if you have to. I'll be fine on my own. Besides, I met Selena yesterday. She's a little too, um… bouncy for me."
"Ha!" Miranda paused in the middle of putting both wallet and phone in her pocket. "That's an understatement. She's a nice young lady, but it's a wonder Bill doesn't keep her on a diet of tranquilizers."
"Is it okay if I look around on my own?"
"You have to turn in your paperwork and then go to Wardrobe—" Miranda stopped when her phone rang again. She turned her back to Ana, running harried fingers through her chestnut hair as she answered it. "Hello? No, I'm coming… In a few minutes." She hung up and gave a shrug, apology writ in every elegant line and curve of her now worried face. "I'll be back as fast as I can."
Ana made herself smile all over again. "It's okay," she said, but it didn't feel okay. "I'll be fine. I have the keycard you gave me, and there's a map in the welcome packet." She spoke with more confidence than she felt, trying hard not to be a burden. "Honest, I'll have more fun if I don't feel like I'm interrupting someone else's day."
"Are you sure? The Castle is huge, and it's easy to get lost. Go to Wardrobe first." Miranda backed toward the door, not listening for Ana's reply. She blew a kiss across the living room. "I'll be back. One hour, maybe two."
Ana held up her hand, getting in a single wave before Miranda disappeared out into the hall and the door swung shut between them.
Ana's hand flopped back down at her side. Her shoulders slumped.
She wandered through Miranda's small apartment, but as much as she didn't want to roam the Castle or grounds all by herself, she really didn't want to spend the day just sitting here, either. She only had eight days. Seven, now. When were they going to get to do any of the fun and kinky stuff the Castle was renowned for?
Stop sulking, Miss Self-Centered. Miranda couldn't help the 'emergencies' that kept calling her away. For all she knew, they might really be important, too. Sighing, Ana made up her mind to try and be more understanding.
Glancing at the table, she stared at her application. She could put it off, she supposed. But what would be the point? Fetching Miranda's keycard from the desk, she slipped it into the pocket of her jeans and tucked her paperwork under her arm. With map in hand, Ana headed for the door. She was staying at the world's most luxurious BDSM fantasy resort. She might as well have a look around.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ana made it from Miranda's third floor apartment and down the hidden employee staircase to the second floor without any issues. From there, however, things got tougher. For one thing, her jeans, sneakers, and t-shirt made her conspicuous. Everyone else was dressed as maids, butlers, schoolboys and girls, and Victorian-era noblemen and women, with a dizzying array of brightly colored and very authentic-seeming costumes. At least, some of them were. Others were downright crazy.
Sexy Spiderman walked past her, arm in arm with Batman, and both had a sexier hip-swish than Ana could ever have hoped to emulate. She stared after them, trying to figure out how both men could pull off such a seductive walk, only to bump headlong into a man dressed like a fox. Except that he wasn't just a fox. He was a fox dressed in black leather chest harness, jock strap and ass-less chaps.
"Hey!" He whipped off his costumed fox head when he saw how she was attired. "They said we couldn't wear real clothes! Why do you get to?"
"I-I—" Ana backed up a hasty step only to trip over a Domme walking her male submissive. Or rather, the Domme was walking. Her submissive crawled, naked apart from a butt plug tail and puppy-dog ears. His nose was painted black, and whisker-freckles had been dotted on his cheeks. His mouth had been painted too, giving him a split upper lip and a smiling puppy grin despite his yelp when she trod on his hand. "I'm so sorry!"
The Domme tried to catch her arm to stabilize her, but Ana caught herself against the wall instead.
"I'm just… I'm very sorry…" she stammered.
The fox pointed at her, tattling to the Domme. "She's in modern clothes!"
Her face burned red-hot when those near enough to hear him turned around to look at her. Unable to bear the stares, Ana stuttered through another shaky apology and then she quickly walked away. She didn't know where she was going. She forgot even to look at her map. She just left the fox and Domme behind her as fast as she could go without running. Down that hall and into another, through a lavish corridor with gold and red carpet running down the middle of the stone-block floor and electric candles in sconces on the walls that looked just like the real thing.
She passed dozens of portraits of masters and mistresses, bondage scenarios, and ancient examples of punishments being dispensed, captured and eroticized and hung in gilded frames between the doorways, and she barely looked at any of them. She barely looked at anything at all, including where she was going, until she rounded a corner and, because she kept glancing back over her shoulder to make sure the angry fox wasn't following her, nearly ran right into the back of a man in full butler's garb. With a lithesome switch in his hand, he didn't notice Ana. All his attention was fixed on the middle-aged woman giggling before him. Her breasts were so big they all but spilled out over the top of her scanty maid's outfit.
"You were warned," the butler said, though the maid didn’t seem to be taking him very seriously, not even when he pronounced sentence on her unknown infraction. "Turn around. Bend over and touch your toes. You've got six licks coming, and I warn you now: if you break position without permission, you'll get every one of these strokes over again."
The maid swiveled, presenting her back and shapely bottom, which rounded in a gorgeous display when she bent over—her long legs enhanced by her high heels and the miniscule skirt that hid nothing once she assumed the position. Giggling, she touched the tips of her fingers to her toes and waggled her panty-less fanny like a red flag before an irritated bull.
/> Ana crashed into the wall to keep from being hit by the switch when the butler snapped it back. With a sound like the ripping of paper, it sliced the air and bisected the pale swells of the giggling maid's bottom. The red line that switch left behind silenced her laughter. She squealed, leaping upright as she grabbed her backside and squeezed in startled pain.
"Shit, that hurt!" she accused. She rubbed in panic, as if she could erase the reddening welt from her skin.
Seizing a handful of the blonde curls pinned beneath her mobcap, the butler pulled the maid's head back, drawing her to lean against his chest while he murmured, in low bedroom tones and with seductive menace, "Do I have your attention now?"
"Yes, Master Grimsley," she gasped, no longer rubbing or giggling.
"Did I give you permission to move?"
"No, Master Grimsley."
"Get your ass back in position. You'll take that stroke over. Move again, and my switch will outlast your breath to laugh."
Ana tiptoed out of that hallway, haunted by the rip-snick of the switch laying its rows of punishing lines. She hid inside the first doorway in her path, taking several deep breaths. The intensity of what she'd just witnessed surprised her. She hadn't expected that, but it put Miranda's threats to punish her—really punish her—in a whole new light. The tingles she'd experienced at the dinner table were completely silent now.
She reached up to cup her burning face in her hands, and very nearly bumped the corner of her application into her eye. She'd forgotten she still had it. Oh God, it was empty. In her anxiousness to get away from the fox and Domme, she must have turned the envelope upside down. She'd lost her application.
She'd also lost the map.
"Oh." Ana quickly retraced her steps down several halls before she realized everything looked the same, from the statues on the tables to the sconces on the walls. It was a sign. Alone or not, she should go back to Miranda's apartment and wait until she got home. She was probably going to have to fill out that awful application all over again. She groaned, then groaned again when she realized she had no idea where the hidden employee staircase was supposed to be from here.
She stumbled upon the nobles' wing completely by accident, and then St. Castle's 'Catholic School,' a dormitory crowded with men and women in school uniforms. It must have been recess, because the library was full of 'students' doing 'homework', and just about every corner had at least one dunce. Shielding her burning face, Ana hurried through that room and in the very next wing she discovered what could only have been a Nursery. One look at all those adult babies, and her jaw dropped.
Don't react. She stared at the baby clothes, the onesies and diapers. Adult-sized cribs and high-chairs. Blankets and toys were strewn across the floor, along with crayons and coloring books and sippy cups… all proportioned to adult sizes.
"Excuse me." A woman in a gray and white Victorian nanny's uniform paused in the middle of handing her 'charge' a stray building block. She looked at Ana's clothes in surprise. "Are you lost?"
"I-I—" She looked past the nanny at the adult 'baby' staring back at her, wide-eyed, building blocks forgotten in his hands. "Is this Wardrobe?"
"No, it's not, but Wardrobe would be a good place to start," the nanny said. "It's too early for the buses to have run today. When did you arrive?"
"Yesterday. I'm visiting Miranda." Ana retreated back out of the Nursery doorway when the nanny gestured, but the woman followed her into the hallway.
"That's Mistress Miranda to you, young lady," the nanny said, adopting an authoritative tone. "Where is your map?"
Ana had the most absurd urge to duck her head and toe the ground. "I lost it," she confessed.
Humming, the nanny pointed down the hall. "Take your first left through the double doors, go down the corridor and past the main staircase. Wardrobe is the third door on your right, past the 101 rooms. The attendants will help you. And," she warned, shaking her finger at Ana, "you'd better find your bracelet before security or Master Grimsley catches you. Or, worse, Mistress Miranda."
Ana opened her mouth, but when the nanny arched her eyebrows in warning expectation of an argument, she closed it again without a word. "Yes, ma'am."
She had a feeling she knew Miranda better than that, but she'd worked with preschoolers long enough to know a lost battle before she started one. Besides, Miranda already knew she didn't have a bracelet. They'd talked about getting them once she'd turned in her application.
Disapproval lacing her scolding tone, the nanny gave her a push. "Off you go. Costume," she called as Ana walked away. "Then bracelet! If I see you without them again, you'll answer to me as well as Mistress Miranda."
Not if she could help it.
Making up her mind to never go anywhere near this wing of the Castle again, Ana headed for the double doors, the first landmark in the nanny's list of directions to Wardrobe. She flung open the door, shooting a hasty glance back over her shoulder to make sure she'd escaped the nanny, and promptly ran into a wall.
"Whoops!" the wall said, catching her arm even as she bounced back off the broad and solid chest of the man she'd run into. He was tall, quite possibly the biggest, most muscular man she'd ever seen in her life. And even though he was smiling, when she noticed the stark white 'Castle Security' letters emblazed upon the uniform black of his t-shirt, a tiny pebble of dread dropped into the pit of her stomach.
"Careful now," he said.
"I'm so terribly sorry!" Ana gasped. "I didn't see you!"
"Well, that's refreshing. Most people see me coming a mile away. You must be Miranda's friend."
"Ana," she agreed. She was willing to bet anything the angry fox had sicced Security on her. She looked at his uniform again. "Am I in trouble?"
"Not that I'm aware of." The security guard grinned. "My name's Jackson. And I think I've been looking for you."
That tiny pebble became boulder-sized. "You have?"
"If that paperwork we found along S-wing belongs to you, then yes."
Ana blinked, not sure if she ought to be worried now or relieved. "You found my application?"
"Found it, picked it up, and have it waiting for you in the Master's office. Which is handy, since that's where I'm supposed to take you." He held out one arm, gesturing for her to precede him, heading down the hall toward the right. "Let me guess, you were looking for Wardrobe and got lost, right?"
"How'd you know?"
"We shuttle lost guests up and down these halls about a dozen times a day. It's no big deal."
"Someone ought to tell that to the lady I just spoke to." Ana couldn't help glancing back at the double doors she'd just come though, and noticing that, Jackson followed the direction of her stare.
"Was that back in the nursery?" he guessed, then grinned all over again. "I'll bet that was Nanny Bess. Normally, our guests are shuttled from Orientation straight to Wardrobe. We try not to let guests run amok, at least until they've got proper clothes on. But, I understand you're a special case."
Why did people keep saying that? Ana followed him through the halls, letting him lead her all the way to the front of the Castle, where one rounded corner took her out of the maze of guest wings into a part she recognized. It was the second floor balcony stairwell, overlooking the grand foyer at the very entrance. Just beyond those lower floor doors was the courtyard where she'd met Miranda face-to-face for the first time.
"Oh, thank goodness," she breathed. Straight down this balcony and into the hallway beyond was the hidden staircase that led back to the third floor. She could find her way to Miranda's apartment from here.
"Don't worry." Jackson patted her shoulder. "I'll get you another map. This way."
Walking with her down the hall, he took her to tiny nook of a waiting area, no bigger than what it took for a few wooden chairs to fill up.
"Take a seat." When he pointed, Ana sat down on a chair by the wall. For some reason, it made her feel as if she were sitting outside Principal Othker's office while he called her parents
all over again.
Jackson rapped on the door with two knuckles and then walked inside, although she hadn't heard an answering hail. A few seconds later, a woman popped her head around the side of the door.
"Ana? Miranda's friend?" Taller than Ana but shorter than Jackson, the woman came out into the hall with her hand outstretched. Her long brown hair was pinned into an elaborate coiffure of curls and a tiara-like crown. Her gold and crimson gown looked like something straight off a Hollywood historical movie set. "Hi, I'm Kaylee. Please, come inside."
"I feel like I ought to have a nametag," Ana quipped, rubbing her damp hands against her thighs as she and the regal woman joined Jackson in the Master's office. Although he'd said she wasn't, this really was starting to feel like she was in trouble, and the very décor in this office only served to amplify that awkward sensation.
The room was part medieval sitting room, part luxurious private-school principal's office, and part torture chamber. Two crook-handle canes hung on the wall between twin floor-to-ceiling, multi-paned windows, which were casting light over an enormous desk. Gray castle stone peeked out from between royal red area rugs, wall draperies and paintings. A fire crackled and popped in the massive hearth across the room, and yet the heat wasn't quite enough to combat the slight chill. Or maybe the chill came from Ana's nerves. Fear always made her cold, and Ana didn't think there was a person alive who could walk past the same open cabinet she just had, look at the wide array of paddles and whips and ropes and clamps and sexual devices—only half of which Ana could identify—and not be, at the very least, unnerved.
"I am in trouble, aren't I?" she asked, as Kaylee, seemingly distracted, gestured for her to take a seat in one of the two chairs set out on Ana's side of the Master's desk. Jackson was already seated on the other, his large frame overfilling the chair, and his long legs crossed with an ankle hooked over his knee.
"No," he assured her.
"Heavens, no," Kaylee reaffirmed, reaching over the desk to retrieve a loose stack of papers. Ana's lost application. "With everything else that's going on, we expected there would be some confusion, especially since you weren't brought in under the usual procedure. Which is fine, don't get me wrong. It's just that Murphy's Law rules, even here. I knew I was probably going to see you at some point today, especially when Sam and Miranda left and I still didn't have your paperwork—"
Ana Adored Page 13